Meal Planning, Beauty Essentials & RoadTripping Tips with Carla Marie

Today we’re talking to Carla Marie. Don’t know who I’m talking about? If you listen to the radio in the mornings, you’re probably used to hearing her voice. She used to be on Elvis Duran and the Morning Show and now has her own show based out of Seattle.

In the interview, she’s talking all about her move across the country, her favorite quick healthy recipe, her three beauty ESSENTIALS, how she stays fit while on a busy schedule, and much more! 

Hey Carla! Introduce yourself to my readers.

I’m Carla Marie. I’m currently working for Carla Marie & Anthony in the morning on Power 933 in Seattle. I’m formerly of Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, a nationally syndicated show where I was a producer, a little bit on-air, a lot of behind the scenes work. Both are iHeartRadio shows. iHeartRadio thought that Anthony and I were working our butts off enough and that we would be a great fit for this new thing they were doing out here in Seattle. And they took the two of us from Elvis Duran and the Morning Show and put us out here.

On Elvis’ show, I did a segment called What’s Trending, where I featured cool products, apps, websites, whatever it might be. I like to call it the “things you didn’t know that you needed until I told you you needed them.” And that’s what I’m also still doing now on this show for our new listeners. Born and raised in Jersey, so it’s a little different being here in Washington, but it’s fun. 

Do you miss NYC?

I miss pizza. But yeah, it’s cool because it’s still a city feel here, but it’s not the chaos of the city. So you still can enjoy it, but it’s not the worst of people everywhere all the time. But I do miss NYC pizza and Chinese food. 

Do you have any go-to tips or tricks for staying healthy? 

For me, it’s a lot of planning, which I’m not the best at. So it’s usually tough. But I know that when I can sit down for the week and say this is what I need to eat this week, or this is what I have event wise to do, okay so what am I going to eat that day or what groceries do I need to get. Planning is the biggest thing. Especially now I have Amazon Fresh, so I can go log on and sit here and relax and order my groceries. I kind of feel like not a normal person sitting home and ordering groceries, but it makes a huge difference. You can look up recipes and order exactly what you need and not be walking around the grocery store like crazy. I think planning is huge, as much as it takes to sit down and do it. It’s super easy when you look at the great return you get from it. 

Were you also planning when you lived outside of NYC?

I was planning then as well, but it’s much easier now because I’m not as busy. I don’t have my friends saying,”Let’s go do this. Let’s go do that,” because I don’t have many friends here yet, so it’s been helping my workouts and eating healthy. I’m much better at it now than I was then. 

What’s your workout schedule like? 

So currently I’m signed up here in Seattle for ClassPass. It’s a national thing. With ClassPass, I’ve tried a hot yoga studio, which I love. If I could do a regular routine and get into something, that’s what I love to do because it kicked my butt into shape last year. But I’ve been slacking with it. I’ve also tried Parkour, which was awesome. That was a lot of fun. A different type of workout but it was exciting.

There’s actually a gym in my apartment building, so I’ve been doing elliptical, treadmill, and weights. There’s really no excuse when you have a gym in your apartment building. So I’ve been using that pretty often. There’s actually a high school field a few blocks away, and I ran on the track for the first time in like ten years. So that was fun, but my routine is to not have a routine. I’d say I work out 3-5 days a week. I try to take the steps!

What’s your go-to healthy recipe?

There’s a turkey chili recipe it’s so easy because I get the pot {or if you have a crockpot it’s even easier}, and I throw in ground turkey, black beans, tomato paste and diced tomatoes, and you let it sit there for 45 minutes. You’re literally doing nothing. You just throw it all in. And then I put it in containers for the week. Then if I want to throw cheese on it when I take it into work, or sour cream when I’m feeling a little crazy I can do that. That’s super easy because you make a huge pot of it and you have lunch or dinner, whatever you wanted it for, for the entire week.

I just got a Ninja and I’m excited. I’ve been doing smoothies, which is awesome. So the night before, I put everything in a Ziplock bag that I want to mix and put it in the freezer. So in the morning when I’m getting ready, I can just throw it in. That’s been a huge help for breakfast. But I’m trying to look at meals I can make with the Ninja. So I’m pumped on that. 

How do you stay healthy while traveling?

We road tripped it out here from New York to Seattle and I would say that was my “OK never do this again” food-wise trip. Road-trip, I swear I would do them every weekend if I could. But, we planned poorly for that. Because our lives were flipped upside-down. So it wasn’t like “what are we going to eat on the road trip.” Everyone was buying us road trip snacks. I literally ate peanuts and Reeses cups for like five days straight. What do you do? You stop at a rest stop and there’s nothing healthy.

So at one point, we had a bag of carrots, and it was so refreshing to eat something like that. If you’re road tripping, you just have to go for it. If you want chips, go for the baked Lays. You got to have that road trip snack. You got to let yourself do it. But don’t do what I did and just pig out on an entire bag of Reeses footballs or whatever they were at the time. 

When flying it’s tough too, because what are you going to take your food to the airport? It’s hard. Go to the little stores they have. I usually go for a water and a breakfast bar to get me through the plane ride until I get there.

Do you have a morning routine? I know you’re up REALLY early.

Every minute counts when you wake up before the sun. I wake up, on a good day, around 4 and I get up have time to make my smoothie or have peanut butter on toast if I want. And then I start getting ready. I don’t normally shower in the morning, because I like to know that I have those extra 15-20 minutes in the morning. I get ready, makeup. I’ll usually have my outfit picked out the night before, because that way I can sleep in and not deal with that disaster in the morning. But I’m usually out the door within the hour.

Most days I’m up by 4:30, and then I crunch everything in half. So I don’t have much of a routine when I do that, but it takes me like 15 minutes to get ready because I’m not going crazy with my hair and I’m not going crazy with my makeup. So it’s easy with that. I want to have more of a structure to my morning so that I know every day I have my smoothie and I got this. You’re so much better when you have a routine like that in the morning, but it’s not the best right now.

It’s cool for me because everyone back home is already awake. So if I want, I can FaceTime my friends in the morning as I’m getting ready and it’s a cool pump me up. No one is doing that, there’s already awake and I don’t mind doing it, and I get to listen to Elvis on iHeartRadio app. It’s like I never left. I get to enjoy listening to the show without having to work. It’s great. 

What’s one thing that you miss from the Elvis Duran show?

They were my friends and family. I spent more time with them than I did my own family. We would be at work for at least eight hours a day, and then a lot of them were and still are my best friends, so that’s another set of hours each day and weekend. Everyone ask me if I miss my family. Yes, I FaceTime my parents. I see them almost more now than I did when I was home. It’s that huge 20 member family, there’s that void there. I’m at work and it’s me, Anthony and our producer. Normally there’s like 20 people doing this. It’s crazy!

But I’ve been in touch with everyone. We all FaceTime. They were out for someone’s birthday the other night, and they were passing me around the table. It’s cool that I get to do things like that. But, I definitely miss the chaos of the show. 

Were you in Vegas for the iHeartRadio awards? 

No I was not. I was sitting in the lounge of my apartment with Anthony and our producer and we were live tweeting it. It was fun. My goal is next year to be at the awards. 

Quick Question Time!

5 things in your purse: My purse is actually a backpack. I have a Gigi New York notebook, my laptop, a random apple for emergencies, Vaseline {It’s life for me. I have a little travel one that I use as my lipgloss, especially when I’m on air because my lips get dry and it’s harder for me to talk so I always put it on. I actually use it on my face a lot, directly on my skin. If I’m not wearing makeup, I’ll put it on my eyes. It’s supposed to be really good for you and it helps shine. Danielle taught me that her grand-mom used to put it on her face a lot and she never had a wrinkle}, and my RayBans.

3 beauty must-haves: Vaseline, moisturizer {I switch around a lot because I get to try different samples of things. My favorite is Murad’s Youth Resurgence. It’s a set for people in their 20s to help prevent aging}, and nail polish.

1 thing you’re most proud of: The fact that I moved across the country. I’m proud of the fact I got this show. I worked my butt off for it, but I swore myself that I’d never leave New York. I would always say, “I’m not going to leave. I don’t need to leave.” When this opportunity came up, I was like this is the opportunity of a lifetime and I can’t pass it up. Everything I said was out the door. I somehow got this courage to be like whatever I’ll do it. I didn’t have time to think about it, which was good. 

Describe yourself in 3 words: Excited, courageous and silly. I’ll go with silly because I never take anything seriously, which is probably not the best sometimes. If I’m in a meeting, I’ll just make fart noises in the middle. It makes everyone laugh. 

Guilty pleasure: Peanut butter, if we’re talking food. The jar. The other day I looked at the jar, and it was the first jar I’ve ordered since I’ve got here. I’ve eaten way too much of it to be living along. It’s awesome that I can just can just scoop into the jar and eat the peanut butter and scoop back in. Because it’s mine and no one else lives here. So yeah, crunchy peanut butter. 

Favorite social media platform: Instagram. I like Snapchat too. It’s cool in a way that I don’t feel like I’m getting annoying. It’s not like I’m posting 50 pictures on Snapchat. That could be annoying. It’s fun with Snapchat because I can run around and be silly. I love being able to see listener comments on Instagram, but I recently opened my Snapchat to be able to do the same thing. I go back and forth with listeners all day. It’s like I’m texting them, which I think is so cool. It’s a tie between Instagram and Snapchat. But I like Instagram because it’s pretty, and I can follow a million people on there easily. 

Typical Starbucks order: Grande Blonde roast – black. Nothing in it. It’s easier for me to drink faster, because it’s not as bitter. If they don’t have it, I’ll do a Pike roast, or if I do an iced coffee and they don’t have Blonde, I’ll get some coconut milk in it. But generally it’s a grande Blonde roast black, and then I’m set and wired for hours. 

Cocktail of choice: Tito’s and club. 

Favorite song playing right now: DJ Snake “Middle” and I also like this new one we recently premiered, Enrique and Pitbull “Messing Around.” I can keep going because I have all these new songs that I love right now, but my FAVORITE is “Middle.”

Be sure to follow Carla on Instagram and Snapchat {@thecarlamarie}.